Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 17
Alice was vocal about her displeasure when I rang for her next morning. I couldn’t decide which she disapproved of more: my going to the beach at night or my failure to ring for her when I returned. There was a lot of muttering about the sand coating my boots and the hem of my gown. As she pulled the handful of seashells out of the pocket of my cloak, she sent me a dark look and said, “That will be the end of it, though, miss. No more. Especially not when it’s a full moon.”
I turned from my perch on the windowsill, where I had been listening for birds, and asked, “Why not on a full moon?”
She shook her head, as if completely exasperated with me. Finally she said, “Because smuggling happens on beaches, miss! Especially when the moon is full.”
I scrambled down, nearly falling to the floor in my excitement. “Is smuggling really still taking place here?”
Regret filled her eyes. She backed away, my boots in hand, and muttered something about needing to clean off the sand. Then she ran out the door. If only I had not been so curious! She might have told me something of the secrets of Robin Hood’s Bay. Hopefully, if I was patient, my chance was not entirely ruined.
But patience did not come naturally to me, and that weakness was never clearer than it was as I waited for a sign from Henry that he was going to propose. I had taken him at his word that I should not push him. But Mrs. Delafield glared at me every time she glanced my way, and Sylvia still had not spoken to me since the night I flirted with her Mr. Brandon. Watching Miss St.Claire hang on Henry’s arm was making me physically ill. I had to leave. Soon.
I watched him during breakfast while Miss St.Claire talked to him about the shame of such a grey and drizzly day when she wanted so much to explore Robin Hood’s Bay. Mr. Brandon talked to me about the birds he had heard on the moors that morning. But the birds were not something I wanted to share with Mr. Brandon.
Not once did Henry look directly at me during breakfast, and in a moment of panic I wondered if I had imagined it all last night. Or if he had changed his mind and was not going to help me after all. But when I stood to leave the room, excusing myself to Mr. Brandon, I suddenly discovered Henry standing too, and when I walked to the door, he called my name softly. I paused and turned, wondering what he was about.
“You dropped this,” he said, handing me a handkerchief I was certain I had not dropped.
I took it, though, and thanked him, and he turned around and walked back to the table. Miss St.Claire shot me a curious look. I slipped the handkerchief into my pocket and hurried from the room. I turned two corners before slipping into the first empty room I found. It was the library, and at this hour of the morning, it was completely empty. Turning my back to the door, I carefully opened the folded handkerchief. A small piece of paper lay inside, folded as well. When I opened it I recognized Henry’s neat handwriting.
Meet me at the entrance to the secret passage at midnight tonight.
I spent the entire day scouring Blackmoore’s rooms and corridors for any hint of a secret passageway. It was truly an enormous house. I passed Henry in the hall once in the east wing, that afternoon. He paused long enough to smile and say, “Have you found it yet?”
“No!” I whispered. “Won’t you just tell me?”
He shook his head, stubborn as always, and smiling with mischief. “You have bothered me about this for so many years, Kate. You will have to find it yourself.”
As he started to walk away, I said, “Just give me a clue, then.”
He looked back, and although I was sure he was not going to help, at the last moment before he turned the corner he said, “It is behind a painting.”
There were hundreds of paintings at Blackmoore. I searched every room and corridor in the top two floors of the east and west wings. The other rooms in the west wing had clearly not been used for some time. The furniture was covered in sheets, and dust motes hung in the air. I was not so bold as to enter any of the rooms in the east wing. Surely Henry would not have sent me on a quest to intrude on others’ privacy that way. After hours of exploration I concluded that the upper floors of the house did not hide any secret passageways.
Then it was time for dinner, and I had to hurry to change and have Alice do my hair so that I was presentable. Dinner lasted much too long, and I sat by nobody interesting, thanks to Mrs. Delafield’s seating arrangements. As the ladies left the dining room, I stayed toward the back of the group, and when everyone else turned right toward the drawing room, I turned left and hid just inside the door of the library. There were plenty of paintings there, and I had not had a chance to look in all the rooms of the ground floor yet.
The library, though, proved to be a disappointment, as did the large entry hall and the corridors leading off it on both sides. Finally there was only one room left: the second music room. The bird room.
I stopped in front of a painting hanging on a wall covered in dark wood paneling. I stared at it, amazed that I had not noticed it before. It must have been the bird and the pianoforte that had caught my attention before to make me overlook this work of art.
It was Icarus. I knew it immediately. His father was tying on the wings he had created for him and pointing toward the sky with a look of disapproval, as though warning Icarus not to fly too high. It was a beautiful rendering—an original, it appeared, by Anthony Van Dyck, according to the signature in the corner.
I touched the frame and felt still for the first time all day. And then the frame moved, and the wall swung out toward me, revealing the secret passageway.